Hello again and welcome back to Lulu's happy hour.
It's a lazy Sunday afternoon. And I'm going to introduce a new segment on our show--Lulu's TV picks. A lot of students have asked me to recommend TV shows and movies for them to watch. So that they can improve their language skills and also learn more about the background culture.
Now, as a fanatic of English language TV shows and movies. I have definitely watched my share of English language TV shows. Not just American TV shows but also a lot of British TV shows. Sometimes also TV shows from Australia and New Zealand and Canada, so it's a good mixture. When it comes to watch TV shows and movies we all have our own preferences.
For instance, my personal preference is definitely Comedy, Crime, Supernatural, Horror, suspense. And now I understand whether you like TV show or not is largely dependent on your own personal taste and preferences. But in this segment, what I want to do is to introduce some of the lesser known TV shows. That are a good combination of entertainment and language.
So that you can enjoy watching show but also learn some language. Let's get into today's pick.
This is a fairly new show. It's British comedy called Quacks. The word quack, refers to someone who tries to pretend to be a doctor. I personally prefer perhaps the first one. It's a show that was aired in two thousand seventeen. So it's very very new.
The first season has six episodes. It's a shows that it said, the Victorian era. For those of you who don't really know that much about the history of The United Kingdom. The Victorian era was a period of Queen Victoria's ring from 1837 to 1901.
So this was the Victorian era.
When English people think of the Victorian era, they tend to think of Charles Dickens, they think of the British Empire, they think of industrialization.
These are some of the key words of the Victorian era. This whole TV show is based on the stories of three doctors. But remember this was almost two hundred years ago. It essentially talked about the history of modern medicine. And a lot of the scene you might find really bizarre and absurd.

But some of them were actually based on real history. Come back to the story, the story is based on three doctors. The first one is a surgeon.
A surgeon, a specialist in surgery.
And he is what we call a showman surgeon.
A showman is someone who likes to show off.
How did he show off you ask? Well, when he performed surgery on patient he would have audience, and these were just people who bought a ticket and came in to see the show, which was an operation. Many of you might think this is bizarre, this is unthinkable. But you know what? Even nowadays, sometimes you hear the word operating theatre. You know the word 'Theater' right? Theater is where you go to see the show. Early operating theatre had raised tables and chairs at the center for performing operations. And surrounded by rows of seats for students, and other spectators, other audience, to observe the case, in progress, in other words, back then, it was like a show, for students, medical students, and also for other people who want to see, the surgery. And this is exactly what you would see in the show.
Nowadays you think of surgeons, they all wearing these scrubs they're wearing gloves and all that.
But back in today the surgeons were just wearing street clothes, and with an apron, to protect them from blood stains. And they operated bare handed.
So they didn't wear gloves, they didn't wear special clothes, they didn't even sterilize their equipments. Sterilize, sterilization. So you can imagine that those doctors in their daily clothes, with an apron and just performing on the patient with a bunch of people watching. It's a bizarre scenario. This was the first character, a surgeon. The second character is a dentist. Dentist is a tooth doctor. He is not just a dentist he is also a drug addict, so he is addicted to drugs, he is testing drugs everyday. And eventually he became an anesthetist or anesthesiologist, very difficult to pronounce these two words, anesthetist and anesthesiologist. So he was trying to convince the surgeon. He could use these drugs on patients during the operation. And back then the anaesthetics he used were ether（乙醚）and chloroform（氯仿/哥罗芳). But because he was struggling, he didn't really have any money and he was in debt as well, so he eventually try to get more money by selling snake oil on the streets. Snake oil is a remedies that those quacks or fake doctors they sold or trying to sell on the street. They would tell you it can cure everything, and those type of remedy are generally called snake oil. And the third doctor is a psychologist.
Back then he was called an alienist, and he would go to asylum. Asylum was the old name for a mental hospital. I remember asylum has quite negative meaning. So nowadays you don't hear them anymore. So asylum is not really used any more to talk about mental hospital. And in this show you also see some of the famous contemporaries. Contemporaries are people who lived in the same era. So in the show you will see the guest appearance of Charles Dickens. The one who wrote tale of two cities. And also Florence Nightingale, listen to the name Nightingale, this was the woman who made nursing a profession of honour. This whole show is based on black humor, satire and absurdist comedy. Satire, which is what British TV shows are very good at. And absurdist comedy. So if you want to watch it, keep those in mind. Otherwise it would be very difficult for you to understand. This show aims to be absurd, to be bizarre, to be shocking. This is all part of absurdist comedy, and it's all part of British humor. In the end let's look at the review of that show. The most of the mainstream media gave very positive reviews for the show, for its originality, and then, and also its ability to combine the real humor with bizarre real historical events. And some of the media are calling for a second series. I definitely would want to see the second season. So that was Lulu's TV pick of the day. Currently it only has one season, six episodes, if you're interested, you should check it out. And I'm sure you know where to find the resources. If you have any comments, have any other recommendations that you would like to share, or you would like to discuss the show. Drop me a line or leave a comment. If you like my show, please don't forget to follow and subscribe. And feel free to share my program with your friends. I'll see you next time, bye!

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